Goodbye. Maybe it was a goodbye kiss.

He slowly pulled back. “You can’t go out like this, Rue.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re filthy. You need a shower, don’t you?”

“I’ll have one later.”

“Later?” His nose curled in distaste, and I frowned.

“Is that a problem?”

“I was about to take one.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. How hygienic of you. My fondest congratulations. I hope it’s everything you wish for. “Okay. I’m going to—”

“Join me.” His fingers braided with mine. “You have to shower at some point, don’t you? Might as well make it fun.” There was no way this was a good idea, and he must have seen it in my face, because he asked, “Why not?”

Because of Florence. Because you’re a bad person, doing bad things. Because you’re wrong, and against everything I stand for, and people could be hurt if they were to find out. Problem was, I didn’t want to say no. I also didn’t want to say yes, but it didn’t matter.

Judging by Eli’s smile, nodding seemed to suffice.

20

BIG FUCKING DEAL

ELI

He was enthralled.

Obsessed.

In love.

Not with Rue, who would slit his throat with a skate blade before becoming the recipient of any romantic affection from one of Harkness’s partners. But Rue’s body—Eli was fucking enchanted. Her solemn, dark blue eyes that stared at him with hesitance. The deadpan way she said the damnedest things, tripping him up every time. The smell of sex and her on his sheets earlier this morning, when he’d had to tear himself out of bed. He’d woken up raging hard, and she’d slept on, soundless, with a hand under her cheek and the other lightly fisted in front of her face, so deliciously at his disposal. Right there, ready to be plucked.

She unhinged him. There was something uniquely good about being in her presence, and he could see himself doing things that ranged from embarrassing to reckless to illegal, just for five more minutes with her.

Naked, ideally.

“Not too hot?” he asked, licking water from where it pooled inside her collarbone. He tried to play it cool, but he hadn’t expected that she’d say yes to staying longer than she absolutely needed in order to get off. He’d spent half the night on edge, staring at the rise and fall of her chest under the sheet he’d laid on her, at the huddled, inconspicuous way she slept, convinced that she’d disappear if he dared to blink. But the morning light had come, and he’d found her next to him. He’d returned from walking Tiny, and her car had been parked in his driveway.

He was going to keep her. For himself. As long as he could.

“No. Not too hot.” She tipped her head back, letting the jet of the shower hit her hair and forehead. He followed the rivulets down the long line of her throat, studying her body in the brightness of the skylight. Eli recognized traces of her rigorous training regimens—muscular arms, rounded quads, strong core. But the cut tone had relaxed to something full and supple. Eli had found her stunning from the very start, but she was irresistible now that he knew that just like Eli’s, hers was the imperfect, well-used body of a former athlete. A body that knew ice. A mix of strength and softness that had his head spinning.

“You’re staring.”

“Yeah.” He smiled. He was going to look at her until he died or until his eyes wore off, whichever came first. “Does it bother you?”

“No.”

She turned to give him her back, hanging her head low to let the jet hit the back of her neck, and the shower stall wasn’t so large that she could do that without her slippery skin brushing against his. After a long look and countless fantasies directed at the dimples just above her ass, he decided that this was an invitation and hugged her from behind, pressing her into his own body.

He’d showered with women before, but couldn’t remember ever bathing one. And yet, Rue let him squeeze bodywash that was going to make her smell like him on his palm, let him nestle his erection against her lower back, and let him use his hands on every wet inch of her body.

Every. Single. One.

“I am actually able to do—oh—this on my own,” she said, biting into her lower lip in a way that made him certain that a just god did exist after all. “But I appreciate the service—” Her voice dissolved into a hitched breath, then a low moan, and Eli pinched her nipples to hear more of that, and then rolled them against his palms, and stopped himself from whispering in her ear that he’d give her everything, anything, if only she’d let him come over to her place and do this for her seven days a week for the rest of his natural life. “I’m not sure whether this is making me excited or sleepy,” she murmured, arching into his touch, her body a combination of vibrating stretch and intense relaxation.

“I can give you both,” he said after a kiss to her cheekbone. “Let me give you both.” She exhaled when his fingers finally began circling her clit, panted and gasped, open-mouthed, throwing back her head into the crease of his neck. “Good girl,” he whispered as she shuddered against him, and then, in her ear: “Take it.”

Her orgasm came almost immediately, and it was all Eli could do not to push Rue into the wall and bend her to her waist and get himself off between her thighs. He imagined himself begging to be let inside, just the tip, and the adolescence of it was at once amusing and mortifying. He exhaled silent laughter in the ball of her shoulder while she still shook with pleasure.

When her heart slowed, she noticed how hard he was. Or maybe she’d known before, and finally took pity. She turned in his arms, impossibly beautiful, lips glistening, cheeks fairy-tale red, and Eli had to close his eyes and stumble back into the tiles when her hand closed around his cock.

She stroked him firmly and slowly, as though the orgasm he’d given her had deprived her of the ability to function at a reasonable rate. It was torturous, but even when he began bucking his hips into her fist, swearing softly against her damp hair, tightening his grip around her hips, she never sped up enough to push him over the edge. “Fuck, Rue,” he said, and then a frustrated, “you can’t fucking—” And finally, humiliatingly, he begged, “Please.” He bit into her neck, and she didn’t shake her head or smile or say anything, she didn’t give in to what he was asking, but her eyes met his squarely, lovely and blue and calm, and that did it for him.

When he came it was so violent, he couldn’t remember ever feeling anything approaching the good of it, not even while fucking someone, not even as a teenager. The pleasure cracked him at the seams, left him gasping soundlessly, speechless, as though his body was too busy experiencing the magnitude of it to produce even the most inarticulate of noises.

So you like her mouth, and she has phenomenal tits, and gives a spectacular hand job, he told himself, heaving his way back to normalcy, knees weak. So you feel like smiling whenever she’s around and want to know what’s in her head. The way she still gripped him, his semen seeping out of her closed fist, was the closest to a religious experience he’d come in a while. Big fucking deal, he forced himself to think, but it left a sour taste in his throat, the same he experienced when lying to himself. Eli watched her watch him, her serene face always so at odds with the chaos she provoked inside of him, and when he couldn’t take her silence anymore, he wrapped both hands around her cheeks and asked, “You still tired?” His voice was hoarse. He wasn’t surprised.